The Shamrocker tour begins!

Dublin Travel Blog

Waking up in the morning is always difficult. It's even harder in Dublin where the whole city parties all night, and all that's left in the morning is a mess. Especially if you live in Temple Bar. My walk from the Bar to the main road where the Radical Travels office was located (The Kinlay House), was a mess. It's bad enough my stupid duffelbag had a broken wheel, it was worse walking on a road with broken glass, piss, a stench, the works.

Monday morning is when tons of backpacker tours leave, and they all leave from Kinlay House, so the place as such was choc-a-bloc full of Aussies. We boarded our bus by 8am and were ready to leave. The crowd looked awfully boring at first sight, and OH DEAR - so many girls! We started off on our journey after our tour guide and driver introduced themselves.

Trim Castle

Guide's name was Shane, charming man who said "Namaste, you're the first Indian coming on this tour" to me. The driver was a sweet lady from Manchester named Heike.

I as usual, chose the last seat on the bus. There were easily about 30 of us. After about an hour's drive outside of Dublin, we stopped at our first stop - The Hill of Tara. The legend about powerful Kings' seat at this place was explained. A few more introductions, I could spot more Aussies and a ridiculously chatty American girl. We spent about an hour or so before we headed back to the bus, and off to Kilbeggan to see a distillery. En route was a stop at Trim Castle (toilet and coffee break).

Kilbeggan was a small distillery, nowhere near the Guiness factory in terms of both the technology and space, but it was nice seeing what old distilleries are like. We had a good guide who explained things patiently. We had lunch at the rsnt here itself, food was so-so. Off to the bus, and onto a boring old town called Knock. I made more acquaitances with Matt (Sydneysider) and Billy (Cannuck). Looked cool enough!

From Knock, it was a two hour bus ride to the extreme end of Ireland, the West coast. Westport.